Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

Opinion

Legalizing Marijuana the Right Way


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Mayor de Blasio, DA Vance & others discuss marijuana legalization (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


Because of the coronavirus crisis, New York is facing a massive budget hole and calls for innovative solutions to dig us out of this fiscal crisis. While Governor Cuomo recognizes the tremendous tax windfall that would come with the legalization of adult-use cannabis, this is about more than just tax revenue.

The reality is that New Yorkers will face a mounting racial and criminal justice crisis without a more equitable plan like State Senator Liz Krueger and Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes have put forward in their Marijuana Regulation and Tax Act. The governor’s plan offers less in terms of racial equity and some of his proposed penalties for cannabis-related offenses will only perpetuate the very problems that criminalization has caused.

Legalization must mean redirecting law enforcement resources to address more serious crimes, expunging records for millions of New Yorkers unfairly ensnared in the criminal justice system, and the creation of tens of thousands of new jobs. Cannabis licensing and sales can be utilized in a way that disrupts the cycles of marginalization, violence, intergenerational poverty, and trauma that have plagued communities of color for decades.

Unfortunately, these potential benefits quickly evaporate with the wrong policy. Any legalization plan needs to ensure that the communities that have been and continue to be disproportionately impacted by criminalization benefit from legalization through reinvestment, as well as opportunities to participate in the legal market. It should not further criminalize the use of cannabis, like the governor’s current proposal, which makes it a class A misdemeanor with no caveats to sell, exchange, or give an individual under the age of 21 any amount of cannabis. That means that, if arrested and prosecuted, a 22-year-old who shares a joint with a 20-year-old could face up to a year in prison. 

If we are serious about rectifying the harms that criminalization has caused, then we need to stop throwing the book at low-level drug offenders. These policies have disproportionately targeted Black and Latino communities for decades, and even as recently as 2019 the vast majority of people arrested in New York City for low-level offenses were Black or Latino. More than 1,300 of the 1,400 marijuana arrests across the city that year were people of color despite the fact that white people are known to smoke marijuana at similar rates. 

Where the money goes matters too, especially in an industry projected to generate more than $1 billion in sales and $350 million in annual tax revenue. The majority of this new revenue—not less than one-third of it, as proposed by the governor—should go to the communities adversely impacted by the War on Drugs, and a just licensing system is equally as important.

A licensing process that prioritizes Minority- and Women-Owned Business Entities (MWBEs) would be transformative for Black and Latino New Yorkers, and help create equity in communities that are all too often locked out of opportunities since they lack access to capital, credit, real estate, or the ears of people in power. Offering incentives and low-interest lines of credit to MWBEs (which the aforementioned legislation in the Senate and Assembly does) ensures they can take part in this once-in-a-generation opportunity. But we also need to include statutes that prevent the wealthy from using their influence, their armies of attorneys, and their vast reservoirs of cash to game the system at the expense of honest entrepreneurs. 

As cannabis legalization takes place, we are going to have thousands of people who will have the opportunity to earn an income with the newly-legalized industry. For that reason, the newly-created cannabis sector — alongside District Attorney offices, employers, community organizations, and labor unions, among others — can create a space that will not only generate jobs with a living wage, but they can open the doors for new apprenticeship programs that create a pathway to education and jobs for young people. Everyone from the farmer and delivery driver to the store clerk must be paid fairly and have access to opportunity if we are to create an industry built on restoring justice. Stealing any opportunities from the communities that need them most isn’t just corrupt, it’s also a crime that needs to be adjudicated. As the head of the Construction Fraud Task Force in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, I went after big companies that abused their power to exploit the MWBE system and stole workers’ wages and I partnered with the community and labor unions, and we must do the same when it comes to marijuana too.

New York is living through a pivotal moment. We have an obligation to reinvent ourselves and lead in driving meaningful change, and the Marijuana Regulation and Tax Act does just that. New York can lead the country and Manhattan can lead New York. We need to take a much broader view of economic empowerment and look at the full range of social institutions that empower advancement and those that compound the problem, and we need to act now.

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Diana Florence is a candidate for Manhattan District Attorney. On Twitter @dianajflorence.

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Seizing the Moment to Solve Our Child Care Crisis


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Child care (photo: Comptroller's Office)


Nearly one year into COVID-19, New York is the epicenter of an unparalleled child care crisis. Women have left the workforce in record numbers as the burden of holding together families falls disproportionately on them, child care options dry up and remote schooling remains our children’s new normal for the foreseeable future. Unsurprisingly, women of color are bearing the brunt of the job losses, with Black women and Latinas experiencing the highest rates of unemployment nationwide. At the same time, child care programs – mostly women-run – are struggling to hold on under the financial strain of pandemic-related expenses and declining revenues.

But make no mistake – this crisis is one of our own making. For decades, government has failed to invest in child care as a public good, leaving families with a patchwork of unaffordable options of varying quality and providers, especially those in our underfunded subsidized system, with poverty wages and no resources to weather this emergency. As the pandemic descended on the city, these fault lines only deepened and reinforced gender and racial disparities in the workforce and at home.

Long before the pandemic, we proposed building out a comprehensive infant and toddler care system, NYC Under 3, to build upon the city’s existing pre-kindergarten infrastructure and provide high-quality, affordable child care to New York City children aged zero to three. Through a small child care tax on the top 5% of  the city’s biggest employers, we could begin charting a path to universal access – expanding care to tens of thousands of low- and moderate-income families currently shut out of support, raising wages of the care workforce, and eliminating child care deserts across the city.

But now we need to focus on the emergency at hand and recognize that there will be no economic recovery – not for women, and especially not for women of color – without child care.

The good news: the federal government can rescue the child care sector. New York State is slated to receive $450 million in emergency child care funds through the Consolidated Appropriations Act that Congress passed at the end of December. The Biden-Harris Administration has earmarked another $40 billion for child care in their American Rescue Plan. If Congress approves close to this amount, New York would likely see another $1 billion in child care funding.  

The bad news: New York previously received more than $160 million in CARES Act funds to stabilize the child care sector, and the allocation of those dollars has been complicated by delays and red tape – preventing dollars from quickly getting into the pockets of the providers most in need of support and hurting the options available to families.

New York State must submit a plan this month for how it will spend the emergency funds. It is critical that these new resources are distributed to families and providers efficiently and strategically. The State should look to the proposal outlined by the Empire State Campaign for Child Care, which recommended directing a share of funds to shore up the existing subsidy system, which primarily serves lower-income New Yorkers, and getting low-barrier stabilization grants directly to providers to make up for lost revenue over the last year.  

Even before the pandemic, there was only enough capacity to serve one in five infants citywide. It is critical that we invest now to ensure financially-strapped programs aren’t forced to close their doors permanently – and families aren’t left with even fewer options.

Parents and child care providers must also have a seat at the table in deciding how resources are spent. This is not just good governance; having those closest to these challenges participating in decision-making processes makes for better policy.

Even if we get this next step right, covid relief is not a long-term solution to our child care crisis. The State and City must step up and do what is needed to actually expand access to quality, affordable child care. Additional state and local investments are particularly important to ensure families whose immigration status makes them ineligible for federal relief are not excluded.

With federal resources on the way and the next State and City budgets under negotiation, we have the chance to build a strong foundation upon which we can work toward the day when high-quality, affordable child care is available to all.

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Scott M. Stringer is the New York City Comptroller. State Senator Jessica Ramos represents parts of Queens. On Twitter @scottmstringer & @jessicaramos.

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City Comptroller Candidates Should Make This Pledge to Combat Climate Change


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The current comptroller, Scott Stringer, with Mayor de Blasio (photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayor's Office)


Perhaps the single most important thing the New York City Comptroller can do to combat climate change is to insist that companies in which we invest our $230 billion of pension money adopt the recommendations of the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure. This year, we will pick a new comptroller. We should insist that all candidates for the job pledge to call on companies to agree to the new reporting rules.

It is tough to imagine a topic with less political sex appeal than accounting standards, but anyone who understands the world of finance and the clout of the city’s pension investments will realize how important the Task Force’s recommendations are. They constitute a call for all companies to include in their annual financial reports an assessment of the risks to their businesses from climate change and their strategies for responding. 

The impact of climate change is all-pervasive at this point. It has caused unimaginable floods here in New York City, untamable wild fires in California, and hurricanes on the Gulf Coast with alarming frequency. Europe has experienced record hot summers. The polar ice cap is melting. The resulting rise in sea levels threatens to submerge island nations and coastal communities from Bora Bora to Brooklyn with devastating consequences. President Biden has declared responding to climate change a top national security priority.

The Financial Stability Board, an arm of the Bank for International Settlements—the central bank for central banks—has a mandate to promote complete and accurate financial reporting by companies around the world. Reliable information is the only way investors know what they are investing in when they buy stocks and bonds. Climate change will affect how almost every industry operates with implications for profits and long-term viability. Yet, there is currently no standard for including the impact in financial reports. Investors are making decisions through smog-clouded vision.

Requiring companies to include a clear-eyed assessment of how climate change will affect their businesses will allow investors, like the five New York City pension funds responsible for the retirement future of 700,000 current and former city workers, to understand a fundamental risk associated with their investments. That will allow smarter decisions that will improve the long-term performance of the funds. Requiring transparency on the topic will cause corporations around the world to embrace measures to reduce climate-damaging pollution because a credible response to climate change will become essential to maintain the confidence of the capital markets they rely on to finance their operations.

Much attention has been focused on oil and gas companies, and three of the city’s five pension funds have divested from the sector. Divestment is a blunt tool. Once used, an investor loses influence over the companies shunned. And while carbon fuel companies are perhaps the most obvious contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, they are far from the only ones. The transportation industry; mining, materials, and building businesses; agriculture, food, and forestry sectors are all huge emitters of climate-damaging gases. All businesses are subject to the extreme weather risks climate change has created. We need all corporations to get with the program of saving the earth. Using New York City’s pension fund power to insist companies adopt the Task Force’s reporting requirements will help it to happen.

Climate change offers more than financial risk. The compelling need to transform the way we power modern life offers tremendous economic potential. The clean energy industry can provide thousands of good jobs right here in New York City. We have ample opportunity to make our region a renewable power hub, including through a repurposing of Rikers Island. With interest rates at all-time lows and unemployment painfully high, now is the time to invest in making our infrastructure more resilient, and our public and private sector buildings more energy efficient. 

Yet, New York City, as big as it is, is responsible for just one quarter of one percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. The companies our pension funds invest in emit far more of the climate damaging pollution that threatens us all. It is time to deploy our financial power in defense of the environment we all rely on. Voters should insist that every candidate for New York City Comptroller pledge to do so. 

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Chris McNickle writes about New York government and politics. On Twitter @NYChrisMcNickle.

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